Friday, November 9, 2012

Greetings, gold fans! I apologize for being fairly quiet, but to be honest, it's been a slow week, especially for a Fair week (more on that a little further in). When it's a slow week, the gold making process tends to be boring. When that gets boring, it's harder to get motivated to write about it. It hasn't been uncommon this week for little daily bursts of WoW to be followed by long stretches of playing my Mechromancer in Borderlands 2.

Still, sales have been made, so let's at least give a bit of an attempt to analyze them.

As you can see, Darkmoon cards are still prominent, but not as much as last week. I also let a Tiger's Deck go fairly cheap, simply because that's the kind of server this is, especially now that we're into our second Fair.

What's happened to Darkmoon cards? It's a combination of a few factors, I think. With the very late implementation of the Ink Trader last Fair, very few people were able to make full decks, and many were left with an inordinate amount of Starlight Ink. Making things worse is that the "I can just get everything from LFR" attitude has increased with ilvl 483 items available from Heart of Fear. All in all, I think we're seeing Darkmoon cards fade into obscurity much quicker this expansion. Not something I want to hear as someone with six Scribes, but there it is.

Sales for the week total 148,951 gold. Not bad, but purchases total 224,806 gold. Wait, what? Oh, that's right. The Black Market Auction House. There are very few of the cosmetic things there that would catch my eye (although if, say, Mimiron's Head came up, it'd be another story). However, Sunday night saw a metaphorical horse of a different color enter the BMAH. By which I mean, not a horse at all, or a mount of any kind.

No, Sunday night featured something much more special on the BMAH: my heroic boots. I know some would say it's silly to spend too much on something that will just be replaced at whatever theoretical point in the future brings us tier 15, and objectively, they're probably right. When you're a main tank for a raid group, though, it's hard to quantify that boost to your whole group's progress. And that's how the last half hour of the auction turned into a bidding war between myself and a Gnome Monk, with me eventually winning the boots for 180k.

Still, viewed another way, that means I only spent 44,806 gold on more routine things, mostly crafting materials (especially ink). For a week with 148k in revenue, I can live with 45k of expenses.

I do plan to do at least one more post between now and next week's summary. I don't have a topic chosen yet, though. This means if there's something you'd like to hear about, you should definitely leave me a comment. If I don't get any, I'll still come up with a topic on my own, but I'd much rather know what you'd like to see.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Greetings, gold fans! I know I'm a little late on this week's sales summary, and for that, I apologize. To be quite honest, I just wasn't in the mood to blog yesterday. It may sound immature, but I was in a bit of a funk.

Why, you might ask? Well, Wednesday was kind of a big day for me. It wasn't so much that it was Halloween (although we did actually end up with candy left at the end of the night), but because it was when I reached gold cap. I was obviously ecstatic and rushed to write a blog post about it.

About 12 hours later, when I went to bed that night, I'd gotten congratulations from my guildies during our raid, but nothing from the blog. No comments, no tweets. That's not uncommon for a typical post, but I had hit gold cap. It was a big milestone and accomplishment for me.

"But it's Halloween", I reasoned, and let it go at that. Then all of yesterday also went by without a peep, and to be quite honest, that got a little depressing. Long story short, I spent a good chunk of my time online that day feeling sorry for myself, and it delayed this week's summary.

It was stupid of me, I'll admit, and I'm not going to let it continue to bother me. I didn't start this blog for fame or praise. I started it because I enjoy writing, I enjoy making gold, and I figured maybe I could help some people in the process. Even if I don't get a word of feedback, I can see by Blogger's statistics that the posts are being viewed. People are seeing it, and if they're coming back, presumably it's helped or even simply entertained some of them. As long as that continues, I'll keep posting here.

Now, enough of my sentimental whining. Let's get to this week's summary.

Now, there are a couple of items in this week's top page that we can discard right now. Relic of Niuzao and Breastplate of Ancient Steel both went for far less than they're worth, and in the cast of the chest, probably less than the cost of the base mats to make it. They were a harsh lesson about my server: People there just aren't willing to buy crafted epics (at least not at what they're worth). I think Faid had a point in this week's Power Word Gold podcast when she said that with LFR, more casual players often have the expectation that they no longer have to buy gear (at least, beyond what's necessary to meet the ilvl requirements). Thus, I got what I could out of the items and moved on.

Strangely enough, though, despite the relative lack of interest in completed Darkmoon Fair trinkets, there is plenty of interest in the individual cards. I covered this briefly in my Profession Roundup Post, but essentially, people are much more willing to spend the gold when it's a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there, particularly if they can make some of the cards themselves. This trend persists even when in the end, they've likely spent more than if they'd simply bought the trinket outright.

As you can see, Living Steel is getting downright pathetic. Generally, if I can make even a slight profit on it, I'll make it, simply because of the chance of a proc. However, today officially marked the first time when none of the base mats were cheaper on my server then the resulting Living Steel. At that point, you're relying on a proc in order to not lose money, and that's never where you want to be.

Jewelcrafting also seems to continue making me gold, but I realize that's not the same for everyone. I may have to make a post about it soon, but there is one thing to keep in mind. Most of the prices on my server seem near the Undermine Journal's average across all realms, so most realms should get some value out of Jewelcrafting advice I give. However, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting are two areas where certain servers just seem to wildly swing one direction or the other.

Anyway, that's about it for things of note this week. Are things similar for you? Wildly different? Is there a specific market you're having trouble with? Please let me know in the comments.